V.A. Officials Subpoenaed for Inquiry Into Wait List

A House committee voted Thursday to subpoena the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, and other top department officials, stepping up scrutiny of the agency amid allegations that secret waiting lists were used to cover up long delays for doctors’ appointments.

The subpoena from the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs covers all emails and other correspondence related to the “destruction or disappearance of an alternate or interim wait list” at the department’s Phoenix medical center. It asked for all emails from April 9 to May 8 sent to or from Mr. Shinseki; Dr. Robert A. Petzel, the department’s under secretary for health; Will A. Gunn, the department’s general counsel; and five other senior officials.

In a statement on Thursday, the Department of Veterans Affairs said it would “review and respond to the subpoena,” but a department official declined to elaborate. The department also said it would conduct “face-to-face” audits of all clinics at department medical centers to “ensure a full understanding” of the policy on how patient access is managed.

The committee chairman, Representative Jeff Miller, Republican of Florida, said the subpoena was necessary because the department had been “stonewalling” requests to provide more information about claims that an off-the-books waiting list was used to hide wait times, and that the list may have been subsequently destroyed.

“It is unfortunate that we have to come to this decision, but we did not do so without substantial justification,” Mr. Miller said before the panel voted unanimously to issue the subpoena.

Image

Eric Shinseki, the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in February 2013.CreditBrendan Hoffman/Getty Images

Previously, Mr. Miller wrote a letter to Mr. Shinseki seeking more information after he said a top Veterans Affairs official had told congressional aides that an “interim list” on a spreadsheet may have been the focus of the Phoenix allegations, but that the spreadsheet had been destroyed.

The department’s stated goal is for new patients to see primary care doctors within two weeks of contacting a department medical center; across the country, that goal is met in about 40 percent of cases, Veterans Affairs officials say.

Mr. Miller said he doubted the department’s review would prove useful, saying in an email, “When it comes to data on patient wait times and access to medical care, V.A. has a credibility problem that is growing by the day.”

After the American Legion called for Mr. Shinseki’s resignation this week, several Republican senators also called for him to step down. No prominent Democrats have made similar calls, nor have Arizona’s two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, who said they would wait for the department’s inspector general to complete an investigation into the Phoenix center. Other major veterans groups have declined to endorse the Legion’s call.

Some lawmakers worry the controversy might unfairly harm the reputation of the Veterans Affairs health system. They point to high patient satisfaction, including a 2004 analysis by the nonpartisan RAND Corporation that found that “the V.A. system delivered higher quality care than the national sample of private hospitals on all measures except acute care,” on which they were comparable.

Mr. Shinseki will testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Thursday, according to its chairman, Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.

“The V.A. provides good quality health care to hundreds of thousands of veterans every single day, and veterans have told us in very strong numbers that they appreciate the quality care,” Mr. Sanders said. “I have no doubt that there are problems, and our job is to ascertain the problems in an honest and nonpolitical way, and address them as best as we can.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: V.A. Officials Subpoenaed for Inquiry Into Wait List. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe